This Is
by the general girl
Summary: For fanfic50, narusaku, Team7 gen. There is a new sort of urgency in the way he touches her now, in the way he digs his fingers into her skin, and in the harsh grip of her hips.
1. Chapter 1

**prompt: #1 "Always, All ways."  
>pairing: NaruSaku<strong>

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><p>"You don't want this, Naruto. Not really."<p>

His eyes are boring into hers, hard. The blue is immovable.

"You—you think you're getting this other version of me, someone from a time that doesn't exist anymore. That girl you thought you fell in love with when you were a kid, that's not me now. I'm not _helpless_ or looking for any kind of salvation. Naruto, you have _no idea—_"

"Stop." The single word is whispered, barely discernable above her rising voice, but Sakura stops to listen. No one ever thinks of ignoring him when he speaks like that.

He says her name, omits the familiar suffix, moves closer, backing her against her living room wall. "Sakura," he whispers again. She wonders why her name on his lips has always sounded like a prayer.

"I know you," and closer, "I might not know a lot of things, like where the scapula is or what antidotes cure the five most common poisons or why the sky is blue but _you_—I know Haruno Sakura."

Naruto stops, head tilted, leaning in, warm breath brushing over her face, "I've studied Haruno Sakura, and I'd like to think that I know her very well."

Sakura can't help it, she swallows, flushing under the intense way he watches the slim column of her throat ripple with the movement. One large, tanned hand drifts from the wall to settle on her shoulder. His eyes are intently trained on hers once more.

"I know that you can shatter mountains with the same hands that can put muscles and nerves and organs back together, I know that you like mornings the best because you always drag me with you to watch the sunrise. I know that you like tea better than coffee even though you're always drinking that stuff black because you need the quick boost to stay awake. I know your favorite lotion smells like green tea and I know you hate licorice," pausing, voice low, his hand moves to brush a strand of hair from her face, "I know that you're human and that you make mistakes, but ultimately you have one of the kindest, most loyal hearts I've ever known. You're my best friend, even if sometimes the things I want to do to you…the things I feel about you aren't what best friends are supposed to feel about each other at all."

His speech has a devastating effect on her. With every word she can feel him digging deeper, peeling her apart layer by layer until she is laid bare for the taking, heart red and pulsating, bleeding regrets and wants that she knows she has no right to feel.

"Sakura-chan, I want you."

He would've worn her down eventually, she thinks, sighing, giving in, long, white arms rising to loop themselves behind his back. She can feel the strength in his broad shoulders and the muscles of his back, in the deft fingers that are now cupping her cheek gently. When she leans in, lips murmuring against the strong line of his jaw, she feels his exhale rumble through her chest.

"Always?" she asks.

"All ways," he breathes back.

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><p><strong>an:** The beginning of my fanfic50 anthology for the community on LJ. This has actually been backlogged for a while...Most will be narusaku, but sometimes I'll stray into gen territory (aka expect Team7 angst/fluff too). Thoughts are appreciated. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Prompt #2: Perfect World  
>Pairing: NaruSaku<strong>

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><p>In a perfect world, Sakura thinks, wars would be brief and clean and rational. The good will be good and the bad will be bad. In a perfect world, there would be no middle ground.<p>

She sneaks a look at Naruto out of the corner of her eye. He's standing over combat plans, grim and unsmiling, dried blood clotting one end of a sleeve. He's wearing the regulation army flak jacket, no sign of orange anywhere, and Sakura thinks he's never looked less like himself.

When he asks the jounin standing next to him a question, his voice is low and rough. There is none of the exuberance that he is famous for, no vibrancy in the deep blue of his eyes. Sakura frowns at the medical reports spread out on her lap and tries to swallow past the lump in her throat. A few minutes later the conversation is over and the jounin exits the tent. She can hear the blond shifting papers around in silence, but she doesn't look up until she feels the weight of his gaze on her back.

"Something bothering you, Sakura-chan?" She smiles tiredly at the familiar suffix. It sounds worn with wear, and hearing him still call her that after all this time is familiar and comforting in a way that everything else isn't.

She watches him move around the table in the middle of the cramped tent towards her, and doesn't answer until he is sitting next to her on the worn wooden bench.

"Besides the fact that there's a war going on and just an hour ago I had our sensei bleeding out on my table? Not really." It comes out harsher than she'd intended. Part of Sakura wants to force a laugh and take the weight off the situation. She doesn't.

Naruto frowns, leans forward and props his arms on his knees. His legs are spread and he takes up more than half the bench. She likes that he still makes it a point to _own_ whatever space he inhabits. It's one of the few things that hasn't changed.

"Sorry, that was a stupid question." Sakura hears the contrition in his voice, that and a hint of anger. It's not at her, she knows. He's almost never angry with her.

She only lets the silence drag on for half a beat longer before resolutely setting the papers aside. Turning so that she faces Naruto, Sakura reaches and tugs one of his hands out from under his chin. He turns to look at her in surprise, eyes first resting on her face before flitting to their joined hands, both of hers clasped over his.

Her skin looks even paler against his dark tan. She takes a moment to admire the contrast, the feel of the callouses on the edge of his hand catching against her arguably smoother hands. Turning them over, she bites her lip when she discovers the angry red skin of the palm.

"Have you been using the Rasenshuriken again?"

She feels his shrug all the way down her arms. Admonishing words nearly parts from her mouth when she realizes that they'd do no good.

Instead, all she can do is heal what wounds the Kyuubi hadn't bothered with itself. Always superficial injuries, things of little consequence.

"There," she says softly once the dim green glow of her chakra fades, leaving behind perfect skin. She doesn't stop holding his hand.

Naruto flexes it once, twice, before curling his fingers around hers. The smile he gives her is quiet and tired but real, and she can't help but smile back in return. She hasn't seen one of his genuine smiles in a while.

In a perfect world, Sakura thinks, Sasuke wouldn't be on the wrong side of the war and Naruto wouldn't have to fight him. In a perfect world, they would still be Team Seven.

She looks at Naruto, sitting just inches away from her. Their only point of contact is at their joined hands. Sakura sighs, gives in to the urge, and shifts until their thighs are pressed together. He freezes at the feel of her, head snapping up to meet her expectant gaze. When she gives his hand a pointed squeeze he finally relaxes, treating her to another half-smile. She misses his blinding grins, but there's something infinitely more potent in his small, sincere twists of the lips that never fails to make her heart skip half a beat.

Closing her eyes, Sakura rests her head against his shoulder. His solidity consoles her, and she breathes a little easier when she finds that after all this time, he still feels the same. Smells the same-a faint whiff of sunshine and Konoha forest.

Naruto exhales, and in that one breath she feels the stress leaving his body. She moves closer when he drops a soft kiss against her hair.

They sit, alone in that tent in the midst of war, and take all the comfort they can from each other.

If there is a perfect world, Sakura thinks, this moment would be it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Prompt# 3: Brand New Day**  
><strong>Pairing: NaruSaku <strong>

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><p>The dawning sun slides slow over her skin, edging the room with a pale gold glow. Miles away, the world is ending, crumbling, with the Kyuubi free and wailing his anger in slow swishes of his chakra-manifested tail. Every swing brings down more homes, buildings, <em>mountains<em>.

Sakura doesn't care. The tiny hut is far away, secluded, _quiet_. And by the time the Kyuubi discovers them…

She curls closer to Naruto, wraps his bloody hands around hers. Behind her back, he makes a low noise. Sakura turns and hides her face in the empty space between the blond's neck and shoulder. There is a deep wound on the right side of his throat, constantly weeping metallic blood, but on the left, if she closes her eyes and pretends hard enough, he feels perfect and whole. His arms tighten around her, and she wonders again at how well he hides his failing strength. She can barely breathe now, held tight to his chest as she is, but Sakura doesn't mind.

They lay on the dirt floor of the hut—shack, really—and bathe in the sunlight. His breathing is wheezy, lungs rattling with every bloody breath, and it can't be very comfortable, can it, to have her weight sprawled on top of him like this? But Naruto doesn't let go, and Sakura can't say she wants him to. She smiles, eyes still closed, and presses a kiss to the salty skin of his throat. She feels his chin dipping and settling against her hair and his tired sigh ruffles her bangs.

He is dying underneath her and she can do nothing but watch and wait. The ravaged seal on his stomach is ripped and torn, and the blood seeps through his mesh shirt and stains her skirt crimson. In the distance, Sakura fancies that she can hear the Kyuubi's roar. Konoha is no more now, and soon, Fire will cease to exist. But here, in this tiny hut just miles away from the destruction, it is the beginning of a new day.

When the Kyuubi finally finds the place, there are no bodies left to burn.

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><p><strong>an:** Interpret the ending as you like. I wonder how many more of these I'll be able to get through before I call it quits? Three down, forty-seven more to go!


	4. Chapter 4

**Prompt #4: Face Down**  
><strong>Pairing: NaruSaku<br>Note: Rated M for sort-of lemon and lots and lots of infidelity, plus mentions of sasusaku.**

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><p>She is face down on his bed, drowning in sensations and stifling her cries in mountains and mountains of white sheets. Their hands are entwined, one of his gripping both of hers hard above her head. Naruto presses against her from behind, and she arches into his touch. He laughs, low in his throat, and the sound draws another moan from her. His free hand wanders the hills and valleys of her skin, skimming across the paleness there, dancing playfully just above where she wants him to touch her the most. Each sweep of fingers brands more heat into her, and she thinks the same thing that she does every time: fidelity is overrated if before this, before <em>him<em> she'd been missing this all consuming warmth in her life. Sasuke is cool, Sasuke is cold, all his passion reserved for battle. In bed, in life he doesn't look to spill any excess. He sees his wife "just enough" ,and no more-they haven't shared a bed for a month now. She thinks that he might have his own whore, his own concubine, someone who didn't know his sordid history so it is someone who he is free to love.

She was bitter, at first. She wanted to wait for him by the door of their barely shared home and confront him with all his hypocritical lies.

Instead, Naruto had found her, and she…

Sakura admits it, it'd been out of spite that first time; she knows that he still loves her, or at least _wants_ her, and that is more than she can say for her husband. So she cajoled and teased and seduced with the kind of practiced aplomb that only a few good, stiff cups of sake could produce. It'd been…it'd been more than she'd expected—more than what she thought she had always craved. And afterwards, when she lay panting, exhausted and sated and exhilarated on the couch (never her bed—that space shared so infrequently with another), Naruto had known. He'd rolled off the cushions and pulled his pants on with a single, unreadable glance at her uncovered body, and in that moment Sakura had felt shame.

But he'd come back to her, again and again and again, and together they'd christened innumerable places—both public and not—in Konoha with their frenzied couplings. After a while, after months of never seeing her husband, after rumors of the Uchiha scion's furtive trips to a civilian village made her straighten her back and pretend the nonexistence of pitying glances and whispered gossip—Sakura forgot how to be ashamed.

And even though she can deny it all she wants, she knows that things are changing. There is a new sort of urgency in the way he touches her now, in the way he digs his fingers into her skin, and the harsh grip of her hips as he enters her, a breath of air escaping in a hiss. Like every time is a first.

In the present, Naruto begins to move inside her, and Sakura's pushed deeper into the mattress, into the sheets. She feels like she is suffocating, and with every thrust he brings her closer to breaking the surface.

Her name leaves his lips in a rush of syllables and heat, over and over again, and the rawness of the sound nearly breaks her, nudges her over the edge. His fingers tighten over her skin, and tomorrow she knows she will find the imprints of his hands on her thighs, her arms. She doesn't bother healing them anymore.

His thrusts are quicker now, the movement growing erratic and frantic; abrupt, a slow draw out and then a quick slam in. Naruto growls and maybe he is impatient, because his fingers descend and only has to pass over where they're joined once, twice before she is coming undone, her scream lost into white sheets.

He collapses on top of her in the afterwards, and Sakura savors his weight pinning her to the bed. It proves that he is solid, that he is real and present and here. She loves that he knows she can take his bulk, and Sakura wonders if he realizes just how much of an anchor she considers him—how much she really needs him.

She thinks that every time they come together, every time he touches her they are rushing towards more than just completion or something as clinical as orgasm. Sakura can't name it, but it sits on the tip of her tongue and it tastes a bit like…change. It tastes like change and catalysts and a certain kind of mutual destruction.

One day, Sasuke will come home and find them, entwined together on the couch, or the rug, or against the wall, and Sakura looks forward to it.

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><p><strong>an: **And this is why I almost never write M rated fics.


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